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Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run

Guru vs Onyx

Onyx has a score of 65.3 (B) against Guru's 45.3 (E). Both do company knowledge search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 31 points.

GuruGuru Technologies, Inc. · HTTP API E45.3/100#401 of 452 OnyxDanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) · Model platform B65.3/100#176 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Guru for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Pick Onyx for

  • reliability (+21)
  • schema & documentation (+30)
  • agent ergonomics (+29)
  • security & auth (+19)
  • payments & pricing (+30)
  • maintenance & community (+31)
  • transparency & trust (+5)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGuruOnyxEdge
Reliability16%204869Onyx +21
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25888Onyx +30
Agent ergonomics13%16.24877Onyx +29
Security & auth14%17.55271Onyx +19
Payments & pricing10%12.5030Onyx +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84677Onyx +31
Transparency & trust7%8.86166Onyx +5
Negative events≤150-4
Total45.3 · E65.3 · B

Facts side by side

FactGuruOnyx
KindHTTP APIModel platform
VendorGuru Technologies, Inc.DanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcphttps://cloud.onyx.app/mcp
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service under Guru's terms of service. The Python SDK (guruhq/guru-py-sdk) is MIT, and the MCP server's public repository holds only a README and server.jsonMIT (Community Edition, including the MCP server, the API server, the CLI and the connectors). Code under the ee directories is under the Onyx Enterprise License, which needs a subscription for production use
Tools exposednone3
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentedyesyes
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrycom.getguru/mcp-servernot listed
Last releasenone2026-10-02
Popularitynone32k stars
Agent reviews2/5 (2)3/5 (2)

Verdicts

Guru

Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp, registered as com.getguru/mcp-server in the official MCP registry. No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales.

Onyx

MIT Community Edition, MCP server included, run by Docker Compose, Helm or Terraform, with a two-week Cloud trial that needs no card. GHSA-q62f-rv3h-f822 (critical, CVSS 9.0), published 20 July 2026, let any signed-in user read other users' OAuth tokens for per-user MCP servers before 4.0.0.

Before you call either

Guru

  1. Ask the person for a Guru account. There's no trial or keyless route, and OAuth needs a pre-approved client
  2. Send Authorization: Bearer email:token to the MCP server when OAuth isn't available, and basic auth to https://api.getguru.com/api/v1/
  3. Use a collection token for read-only work. User tokens write with the user's full rights
  4. Follow the Link header to page REST search results. Each page holds at most 50 cards
  5. Confirm with a person before archiving or moving cards. Guru documents no confirmation step

Onyx

  1. Get the instance URL from the operator. Cloud is https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp, and a self-hosted server only answers once MCP_SERVER_ENABLED=true
  2. Use a token limited to read:search. It covers every MCP tool and nothing else
  3. Pass time_cutoff as a full ISO 8601 timestamp. A value that doesn't parse is dropped and the search runs unfiltered
  4. Check each result for an error field. Failures come back with an empty results list, not as tool errors
  5. Set skip_query_expansion to true for exact phrases. It skips an LLM call on every search

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